In a piece published earlier today, MMO Culture claimed a number of Black Desert statistics gleaned from last week’s Daum Korea press conference:
- 400,000 US/EU purchasers in the first month of launch
- 120,000 average daily US/EU users
- 100,000 concurrent US/EU users (peak, presumably)
- $12 million (USD) in revenue in month one (this appeared to be an extrapolation on the part of MMO Culture)
- Daum’s goal is a million US/EU users this year.
We reached out to Daum EU directly to verify these numbers in the absence of a hard source, and the company has indeed confirmed them, telling Massively OP that the figures from Daum KR are legit and that an official statement from Daum EU is on the way. We’ll update once we have that additional statement, but for now, it appears the game is doing damn well.
Update – 3:30 p.m. EDT: Daum’s official press release is out now.
Amsterdam, The Netherlands – April 5, 2016/ Daum Games today announced that Black Desert Online has sold 400.000 copies in its first month on the European and North American markets. Black Desert Online is expected to become one of Korea’s most successful games in the West as it is drawing exceptionally favorable early responses with its new player base.
“Considering the upward trend, I expect that the game will achieve over one million sales this year. What’s impressive is these figures far exceed those in the domestic market,” Daum Games Europe CEO Min Kim said in an interview in Seoul, last Wednesday.
Daum Games attributes much of the success to adopting a premium business model for Western audiences as opposed to the free-to-play model used in Korea. After purchasing the game once, players have access to all content updates for free as they become available. Daum Games is planning to catch up on the Korean service by delivering near-monthly content updates for European and North American players to enjoy.
Furthermore, Black Desert Online’s cash shop is also performing extremely well. “A game with a buy-to-play business model normally has a much lower conversion rate for paid in-game items compared to free-to-play games,” explains Kim. “But Black Desert Online is recording a much higher pay ratio than the average 11 percent normally seen in free-to-play games.”
Black Desert Online now boasts an average of 100.000 concurrent users.
